Fears over Asia’s bird flu crisis worsened on Wednesday as worst-hit Vietnam admitted that nearly 900 000 chickens possibly exposed to the deadly virus were sold to the public, and international health experts scrambled to find a vaccine.
”We have no idea whether these chickens were killed and eaten or slaughtered,” said Nguyen Van Thong, deputy director of the veterinary department under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. ”This poses a threat of the disease spreading.”
The avian influenza ravaging poultry farms in Asia has killed five people, all in Vietnam, and millions of chickens. Struggling to contain the epidemic, jittery governments have banned poultry imports from countries affected by the disease. Others have ordered mass slaughters of chickens.
Mainland China, which has not reported any cases of the bird flu, vowed to step up vigilance at its border with Vietnam.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said it is working on a new vaccine to protect people from the avian flu, which has struck poultry farms in ”historically unprecedented epidemics” in Vietnam, South Korea and Japan. It expressed ”mounting concern” over the five human deaths.
”This is in response to a threat we see and a threat we’re still trying to assess,” WHO spokesperson Bob Dietz said in Hanoi on Wednesday.
Laboratories in Hong Kong and Japan are working with flu virus obtained from two of the victims in Vietnam. The WHO also oversaw production of a similar vaccine during last February’s bird-flu scare, which caused two cases and one death in Hong Kong.
However, making sure a vaccine is safe for public consumption could be a lengthy process.
”It could be several months to several years” before it’s ready for the general public, Dietz said.
News that potentially sick birds were sold to the public in Vietnam before a mass cull was ordered prompted new health worries.
”There’s been nearly 900 000 chickens that farmers have sold to the market from the beginning of January, mostly from Long An and Tien Giang,” said Nguyen, the veterinary official, referring to the two provinces that have been worst hit by the epidemic.
The chickens were still alive when sold.
Thailand, meanwhile, became the latest country to hand out death sentences to fowl. Agriculture officials insist that Thai chicken stocks are safe of bird flu, but some farmers are crying cover-up.
Thousands of chickens have fallen ill and died in recent weeks.
The Bangkok Post reported that 850 000 chickens have been slaughtered to prevent the spread of fowl cholera and bronchitis.
Agricultural officials said there would be more precautionary killings in 20 provinces.
Cambodia, which has temporarily banned imports of Vietnamese poultry, said on Wednesday it will destroy 159 000 duck eggs seized from traders who smuggled them illegally from Vietnam.
In Hong Kong, a dead falcon tested positive for bird flu on Wednesday, prompting officials to step up surveillance at local chicken farms, although they said the public was in no danger.
The peregrine falcon had the deadly H5N1 virus, which crossed over from chickens to humans in Hong Kong in 1997 and killed six people.
A WHO team plus six scientists from the United States Centers for Disease Control are in Vietnam investigating how the same H5N1 virus jumped from poultry to people there, Dietz said.
Vietnam is the only country with confirmed cases this year of bird flu in people.
Among the puzzles the scientists need to solve is why most of the bird infections have occurred in southern Vietnam, while all the human fatalities have been in the northern region around Hanoi.
So far, there has been no evidence of person-to-person transmission. But health officials have warned that if the avian virus mutates to allow human transmission, it could make the disease a bigger health crisis than severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars), which killed nearly 800 people worldwide last year.
The spread of bird flu, along with the re-emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome — with three recent cases confirmed in China — has put Asia on a region-wide health alert.
It is the first such bird-flu epidemic in Japan since 1925, and the first documented in Vietnam and South Korea.
A vigilant China has banned chicken imports from Vietnam, South Korea and Japan, and on Tuesday, its southern province of Yunnan closed all 40 trade posts along its 1 200km border with Vietnam.
China’s state-run media announced on Wednesday that the country’s Cabinet was ordering agencies that deal with border areas to increase inspections. Prevention of bird flu must be considered an ”imperative task”, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
The government also ordered inspections of fowl markets, storage facilities and processing factories. — Sapa-AP